“Each page in the flip-book corresponds to an individual piece of artwork that, along with all the other drawings, makes up a movie when its filmed by an animation camera.”

As we all know, a flip book is a collection of combined pictures intended to be flipped over to give the illusion of movement and create an animated sequence from a simple small book without machine. Flip books are often illustrated books for children, but may also be geared towards adults and employ a series of photographs rather than drawings.

Flip books are not always separate books, but may appear as an added feature in ordinary books or magazines, often in the page corners. From a few pages to more than a hundred, in order to flip them over easily and give the right place to the shown sequence, about 30 pages is ideal. Some books also use the technique to create animation by setting a series of pictures on the outer margin of pages or by using the flip book to support a demonstration, especially regarding sport.

Flip books are essentially a primitive form of animation. Like motion pictures, they rely on persistence of vision to create the illusion that continuous motion is being seen rather than a series of discontinuous images being exchanged in succession. Rather than “reading” left to right, a viewer simply stares at the same location of the pictures in the flip book as the pages turn. The book must also be flipped with enough speed for the illusion to work, so the standard way to “read” a flip book is to hold the book with one hand and flip through its pages with the thumb of the other hand.

The magic of flip book touches everybody, no matter the age or nationality. As you do not need peculiar knowledge to use it, it has a universal characteristic. Those who enter the world of flip books are more often interested in the funny aspect rather than the content itself.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 3rd, 2014 at 2:16 pm and is filed under blog5. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.